From the Archive Timeless stories from our 174-year archive handpicked to speak to the news of the day.

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At the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic, I led a virtual discussion of War and Peace, with the thought that someone else might enjoy reading the novel with me. Three thousand people ended up ...

From the introduction to a new edition of By Night in Chile, a novella by Roberto Bolaño that was published in 2000 by Editorial Anagrama. The book was translated from the Spanish by Chris Andrews and ...

The AARP stands for nothing. In 1999, the group announced that its four-letter initialism, which for more than forty years had denoted the American Association of Retired Persons, would thenceforth ...

From Mysticism, which was published last month by New York Review Books. “Mysticism” is the word for what we modern, critical philosophers are meant to distrust in the name of enlightenment. It is all ...

I’ve written in many places, some wonderful, others makeshift or uncomfortable. I’ve written on trains and in hotel rooms, at ergonomically perfect desks and on laptops balanced on my knees. I once ...

From Mourning a Breast, which was published in July by New York Review Books. Translated from the Chinese by Jennifer Feeley. Every fall, my friends and I get together to admire the lanterns of the ...

From Vanishing Treasures: A Bestiary of Extraordinary Endangered Creatures, which will be published this month by Doubleday. Rebecca was an unusual White House inhabitant for two reasons. The first ...

This month’s Letters section is devoted to remembrances of Lewis H. Lapham (1935–2024), the editor of Harper’s Magazine from 1976 to 1981 and from 1983 to 2006. I first worked for Lewis just out of ...

In the summer of 2023, California legislators approved a bill banning discrimination on the grounds of caste. Defined in the bill as “an individual’s perceived position in a system of social ...

"Monarchy offers a fantasy of national communion while, by its very existence, making it more unlikely to ever come to pass." ...